Bryan Poole, Ancient Whales rehearsal, 2018
A Tourist in the Land of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Vanessa Briscoe Hay
Vanessa Briscoe Hay, 62, lead singer of the seminal Athens’ art/post-punk band, Pylon, has ridden quite the wave from her humble beginnings. The climate in Athens, Georgia in the 1970s – especially in the Art School at the University of Georgia – nurtured a creative/cultural explosion of art […]
Hey Somalia, Log On
One, exactly one, Malaysian person has visited athensuncharted. To that end, I’d like to thank you, Mister Malaysian. Dear Malaysian visitor, What the hell were you thinking? Why in God’s name did you visit our Georgia arts magazine? You live in the South Pacific. Go outside, for God’s sake. Thank you […]
Portraits – Cameron Bliss
AU spoke with artist Cameron Bliss, 47, at the studio she shares with her husband – musician and Winterville, Georgia Mayor Dodd Ferrelle – bursting with instruments, recording equipment, paintings, along with her trusty dog Buoy. A lone easel displayed a work in progress. There was an extra-large […]
Art, Faith & Spirit: William Bray pt. 1 – The Untold Story of How William Bray Saved John Waters’ Ass
Sometimes you need to stretch out, and this is what AU is doing for our ongoing conversations with long-time Athen’s resident, William Bray, 80, a 5th Generation Georgian and founder of the Georgia Fine Arts Academy in 1980, to “encourage and stimulate the development of the arts and […]
Beckoning Worlds – the art of Lisa Freeman
Eons ago at a housesitting gig in the East Village for art critic Dore Ashton (author of A Joseph Cornell Album) there sat a Joseph Cornell box on a shelf above the bed to my great delight. Experiencing Lisa Freeman’s “whirls,” as she calls them – because the pieces can spin around […]
Invisible Orientation
It wasn’t that you couldn’t get the girl; it was that you couldn’t even get her in your own head. You never even wanted to “get her,” but since you are a guy and you don’t like guys you think that is what you need to do to […]
Miniature Ministry
Nine-tenths of a tiny, yellow wooden beach house sits on display in the lobby of the Lanier Gardens assisted living facility’s favorite gathering spot, The Wicker Room. It would be a complete house if not for the see-through cut-out on the back side. But without the cut-out it wouldn’t […]
Athventure
Welcome to Athventure! AU first ran into artist Will Eskridge at the Bulldog Inn Art Show in 2015, where he transformed a generic motel room into highly-charged weirdness with his humongous (there’s no other word) Wolf City installation. We brainstormed with Eskridge who came up with the concept […]
Mrs. Creatinomics to the World
INIMITABLE, PRIMARY, BEAUTIFLORAL, AND UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN: A DAY IN SARAH CARNES’ IMAGINARIUM “The doctor who delivered me, at home of course since that’s how they did it back then, told my mother that he could tell that I would do something special.” “I like it […]
Script – Setting Solstice
SETTING SOLSTICE by Cheryl Ruebner SCENE I, Birth Woman wakes up on rock in the middle of the river. Her eyes are closed (she is blind), and she makes her way by feel to the bank, and climbs up. She continues to walk by feeling her way. SCENE […]
Setting Solstice
Stills – Setting Solstice
The Yo-Yo Effect
Athens is a yo-yo town. It’s not home to a particularly large amount of yo-yo toys. It wasn’t the birthplace of early 90’s rap phrases. It’s a yo-yo town in a geographical sense. People live here for a while. They leave. They come back. They leave again. They […]
How We Got Our Name: ENTER THE DOMAIN OF THE SPECULATORS
It took us almost 3 hours to come up with a name for this thing…and not only that we were feeling no pain at the time. Alcohol and brainstorming have always been friends, good friends, friends with benefits, but mainly friends with the opposite of benefits. But it wasn’t Mark’s […]
Fire Goddess – an interview with Ember Fox
Ember Fox (aka Cheryl Reubner), 30, is a poet, fire-flow/performance artist, entertainer, provocateur, gypsy, self-described “ham.” Her journey led her to Athens, which is not uncommon for artist-spiritual questers who meet up on the secret art nodes. Since her time here, she’s moved on to Chicago, where she […]
One More Chance: Harold Rittenberry
Harold Rittenberry, 83, has a unique approach to showing his work. “I don’t like to fool around with galleries,” he says. He just places them in his front yard. The Rittenberry Spirit Sculpture Yard is open 24/7, come rain or shine. So if you’re in Athens do stop over to the […]
State of Mynd
Hasn’t everything been done to death? Evidently not. This is my 4th foray into the literary/art world as an editor. In the mid-1970s/80s it was Polis (Boston, Provincetown) made with ye olde paper, a few hundred copies for each issue, with fiction, poetry, essays, art. My stint as Music […]
